Emotional literacy in Deaf young people

  • Research type

    Research Study

  • Full title

    Emotional literacy in Deaf young people: Do emotional literacy scores change between admission and discharge for young people admitted to a deaf CAMHS inpatient unit.

  • IRAS ID

    139716

  • Contact name

    Nicoletta Gentili

  • Contact email

    nicoletta.gentili@swlstg-tr.nhs.uk

  • Sponsor organisation

    South West London and St. George's Mental Health NHS Trust

  • Research summary

    Emotional literacy is the ability to recognise, understand and appropriately express our emotions. These are a set of skills which allow a better understanding of ourselves and those around us. They form the building blocks of our relationships and give us a sense of community. Many deaf children/adolescents have a delayed onset of language acquisition and communication. This subsequently has the potential to impair emotional understanding and expression, however the severity and impact varies with each child. The National Deaf Child and Mental Health Service (NDCAMHS) at Springfield Hospital, South West London and St. George’s Mental Heath NHS Trust offers emotional literacy training sessions to all their inpatients as part of their treatment. This piece of research aims to discover the effectiveness and viability of these emotional literacy sessions. An emotional literacy tool will be administered at admission and before discharge. The tool will be a deaf-friendly, age-specific combination of questions and pictures the child will need to answer and/or recognise. The tool is designed to be self-administered, however there may be elements where a health care professional may need to support understanding of the tool. Data will only be used if the patient has been admitted for a sufficient amount of time i.e. 2 months as this will give a suitable number of sessions to assess whether the intervention is effective. From the analysed data, we will be able to see: if patients are improving their emotional literacy skills, if they found the sessions helpful, and finally if there are ways to improve the sessions. The research will be carried out at Springfield Hospital and will continue for approximately 4 months (Oct-Feb 2013/14).

  • REC name

    West Midlands - South Birmingham Research Ethics Committee

  • REC reference

    13/WM/0427

  • Date of REC Opinion

    25 Oct 2013

  • REC opinion

    Further Information Favourable Opinion